Dr. Aristizabal earned her bachelor and master degrees in physics from La Universidad de Antioquia, the second largest public university in Colombia. After graduating, she taught undergraduate physics courses in the engineering department for three years. She came to this country to pursue a Ph.D. in physical oceanography at Rutgers University from where she graduated in 2013. Her graduate work focused on the process that control circulation, stratification and dispersion in Delaware Bay. Subsequently, she took a postdoctoral position at University of Connecticut, where she studied the temperature and velocity fluctuations in the Santa Barbara Channel California. Dr. Aristizabal joined the Coast Guard Academy in 2015 as a physics instructor.